h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Re: Every Breath You Take. I think it's actually about obsessive-love and stalking.

"Since you've been gone I've been lost without a trace/I dream at night I can only see your face/I look around but it's you I can't replace/I (forgotten this bit) yearn for your embrace/I keep on crying baby, baby pleeeeeeaaaaaaseeee"

The lyricist for the Police obviously had a barmy with some girl and started hanging around outside her house

Still think Alan Partidge's interpretation of Sunday Bloody Sunday by U2 is the best....
"It really encapsulates the feeling you get on a Sunday doesn't it, you know you wake up in the morning, you've got the papers to get through, then you have to wash the car and mow the lawn, and you just think Sunday, Bloody Sunday"

Jerusalem is actually the theme song of the WI (womens institute) I only know that cause my mum used to be a member!

Sting wrote 'Every Breath You Take' when he was going through a particularly messy divorce - so the incredibly bitter lyrics of obsessive love with the preoccupation of shattered fidelity seem to strike an incredibly loud bell with the word 'irony' emblazoned all over it when the very same song is in fact the most requested song at wedding receptions.

Procul Harum's 'Whiter Shade of Pale' was 'inspired' by Bach's 'Air in G'. It seems that he couldn't remember how to play it properly.

The La's 'There She Goes' is all about heroin addiction too.

'Songs of Love'/The Father Ted theme tune isn't about songs of love, despite Neil Hannon's ever dulcet tones, but about a frustrated songwriter observing flirting pre-pubescent teens... However, the theme tune came first, and the lyrics afterwards.

I think the anthemic I Will Survive, sung drunkly on dancefloors by wronged women everywhere, was really about Gloria Gaynor's bad back.

My dad told me that so it might in fact be a lie

k

should've read 'drunkenly'. Drat.

A bad back? It does seem to mention a person a lot of times.

Yeah, Every Breath is another example. Played at a lot of weddings and about a mad stalker.

You're Georgeous by Babybird a few years back was very much misinterpreted.

It was supposed to be harsh comment on the model and fashion industry but got hijacked by millions of lovers looking into each others eyes and...

Still, it got to number 1 so I guess Babybird weren't too bothered.

Ivor Biggun's The Winkers Song has very little to do with the lowering of an eyelid.

The Dead Kennedys California Uber Alles also got it wrong about Gerry Brown in 1984

As for Simply the Best, that many folk adopted it as their theme tune that it should have been renamed Simply Quite Good.

Paul McCartney's Give Ireland Back to the Irish was lost on me. I searched everywhere in the house, but couldn't find it.

No clanger I, as I can't even remember his name! If I wanted to drop a name, i'd have to settle for the virtually unknown Dave 'Honeyboy' Edwards, last true survivor of the delta blues tradition.
'Every Breath You Take'-I'd always assumed that this was about the particularly unpleasant break up of Sting's first marriage. There you go.
The Kennedy's may have got the specifics wrong, but they were right on the generality-and anyway, imagine if it was about Il Blairo?

Of course, for sheer dissemlance in the face of adversity, one would have to go a long way to beat TOTP's official line that The Shamen shouting 'E's are good, E's are good' at the nations youth was *actually* about a man on the night club scene...

Jonathan King - Everyone's Gone to the Moon. A quick glance out of the window reveals this to be totally untrue.They should jail this man for kidding us with porkies like that...or something along those lines.

You're having my baby - Paul Anka. Well Mr Anka, I've just bought a test kit and I can assure you that I most certainly am not.

This is a repost as the last one seems to have seen Orcus' thong and committed virtual suicide.

I've just looked at the lyrics of California Uber Alles BS and see what you mean:-

"My aura smiles and never frowns"

"You will jog for the master race and always wear the happy face"

"Knock knock at your front door, it's the suede denim secret police, they have come for your uncool niece"

All quoted lyrics, Copyright 1980 Cherry Red Records

I'm away to look at the lyrics of Kill the Poor

Apparently they strongly objected to Has anyone got any salmon? and something about veras that I can't remember because they were overt drug references but were fooled by
Ebeneezer Goode...eezer Goode....eezer Goode.

Somebody told me that this was because they only see the things written down and that bit looked harmless!

k

Well, veras is vera lynns=skins
Salmon I don't remember being in the song?

It is salmon and trout=snout. Don't know why that line stuck in my head though!

The Manic Street Preacher's "A Design For Life" mocked weekend boozer types, who nonetheless sang along to it's anthemic "We only want to get drunk", probably whilst waving their pints of horrible lager about. Idiots

Underworld's "Born Slippy" was similarly misinterpreted.

The Manics can talk! What with the lost weekend their guitarist's having.

The One I Love by REM usually heralds a load of snogging to people who have never listened beyond the first line:

"This one goes out to the one I've left behind
A simple prop to occupy my time"

What about BrotherHood of Mans' Save all your kisses -

"Save all your kisses for me, though your only three"

Scary song.

CH